


Cotton

by wispmother



Category: Game Grumps
Genre: It's All Sad, M/M, Sad Ending, Sad middle, fair warning, one of 'em is dead, sad beginning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-04
Updated: 2015-11-04
Packaged: 2018-04-29 21:11:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5142572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wispmother/pseuds/wispmother
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan asks to stop by the ocean after a funeral. He has some things to leave there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cotton

The sky was a dull smooth grey, the ceiling of clouds threatening weather that kept everyone else safely away from the beach, away from the cold and the sharp wind that was pushing in a mid-winter storm. Dan could feel the damp sand shift under his boots, and he tried not to think of how it had felt years and months ago, dry and hot and how they’d laughed as it burned their skin, slid into sandals as fears were faced, even if just for a moment. The water had been calmer that day, the sky bluer. Dan’s hands balled tight in the pockets of his leather jacket and the wind pulled at loose strands of his hair that he’d tied back on a whim.

He could feel the others watching him from the parking lot, perched on the cars on the hill above the beach. He’d asked Suzy to stop, and thankfully she didn’t ask why, just did as he asked. Ross and Holly and Barry in the other car had followed suit, flinging car doors open as he jogged down the steps and they never tried to follow, probably because Suzy stopped them. Now they were watching, waiting, not sure what he was going to do. He guessed Ross and Barry would be the first to run down, if worse came to worse, but it wouldn’t get to that point. That wasn’t why he was here.

 

They’d broken up a long time ago. Things just hadn’t worked out the way they’d hoped for. The longer it went on, the more they both realized they had probably been better off as friends; friends that skirted the line between close and too close and that should have been enough but it wasn’t. It didn’t matter who made the first move anymore - Dan wished it did – but he remembered the nervous feeling he got that first night they kissed, the first time they touched each other where it meant a lot more than playful contact, the first time they understood what it really meant to love someone and how naked it made you feel. Then again, maybe that had just been Dan.

 

Somewhere above him, gulls screamed into the air, calling for each other in the cold. A few steps closed the space between Dan and the edge of the water, the line where choppy waves swelled onto the sand and retreated. He unclenched his hands, feeling for the small items that shared the space of his right pocket. Three things, small and easily overlooked, easily forgotten; he pulled them out of his pocket and held them in his open palm. Maybe he was trying to convince himself to not go through with this.

 

He could pinpoint the moment he knew they’d made a mistake. They’d started bickering more and more- both of them had so much work they wanted to do, so much they felt they needed to accomplish and maybe the little fights, the unrelenting inability to let the smallest of things slide, were the quiet attempts to break each other, to prod the other into calling it quits. But they were both stubborn. There was one night where they’d started a fight that Dan knew would end with him on the couch.  What was it that he’d said? It escaped him, standing there on the beach, but the way he’d said it, the look on his face…whatever they’d become wasn’t what they’d wanted.

 

Another two steps put him the closest he’d been to the ocean since the day they’d gone to the beach together. A year and months ago, it’d been warmer, they’d been happier. The relationship had been newer. There had been two – the both of them. Dan could remember the smell of coconut sunblock and the feel of hot sand and the way their hands and fingers had laced together and that had been enough then. Enough to get Dan in the water, facing his fear and he remembered he wanted to go back to shore but there was so much courage in the way he’d held onto him… he’d felt invincible.

Why had he ever asked Arin to let him go?

He shifted two of the three items from his right hand to his left. The left behind item cradled in his right palm was a cheap flash drive. There were hundreds of files on it. He wondered how many were irreplaceable, but killed the thought as he drew his arm back and threw the small black thing into the water. It was gone, they were gone. Pictures and emails and things written together – they were gone now. He passed another item from left to right and didn’t have to look at it to know what it was. He threw hard again, trying to put as much distance as he could between himself and object sailing through the air.

 

The night they broke up, there was a stillness in the air, a foreboding anticipation that always preceded a bad storm. They stood out on the driveway of Arin’s place because Dan had no intention of staying, even though everything in Arin’s face and voice and words was asking him to come inside, to talk and to think and please just wait, but Dan was done and tired and had somewhere to be in the morning and he just wanted Arin to let him go.

_‘Please, just let me go.’_

That’s all it took.

Arin let Dan go, gave him what he wanted and that was it. Dan remembered feeling like it was too easy then, but being glad that it went so smoothly, that it ended so cleanly. For a while, Dan felt happy and it was easy to forget the ache in his chest that crept up on him in the quiet hours at night or early in the morning. But things fade, everything does, and soon he couldn’t forget the ache, couldn’t put it on pause until later. Months after the break up, Dan realized he’d made a mistake.

How do you apologize for asking someone who loved you to just let you go? How do you tell them you made a mistake? How do you beg for forgiveness, for a chance to be loved by them again?

Dan found the coward’s way out was a letter, penned at 3 in the morning, now tied to an old flip phone from a junk draw, sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

 

He didn’t want to remember the phone call. He didn’t want to remember Suzy’s voice, thick with tears and panic because accident, hospital, Arin. Dan had heard people saying they felt like they were moving through a dream during traumatic incidents, but he hadn’t understood what they meant until it happened to him.  Somehow he’d found his way to the right hospital, found his friends. Found out he was too late.

 

That had been five days ago. The arrangements were a blur. Honestly, Suzy and Holly took care of most of them, Holly being the one able to keep herself level-headed enough to deal with strangers, and Suzy because outside of Dan she knew him best and she needed to distract herself so she volunteered.  They buried him on a hillside, because the view was good and that was something he’d care about, even if he tried to make it seem like it wasn’t. The ceremony was short and simple and to the point. They tried to laugh, tried to tell the stories that meant the most, because that’s what he would have wanted. They succeeded a few times, and for those small seconds it was like he was there, and it was okay.

But then it was over, and they left so dirt could be pushed back into the hole that was made for him and so that they wouldn’t have to see it and that’s when Dan asked Suzy to pull over so he could do what he felt would be enough. He’d thought about putting the things in the ground with Arin, but somehow that felt like he was still trying to hold onto him and that wasn’t fair. The ocean was neutral territory. The ocean was a place where he could redeem himself, someday.

The last item was heavy in his hand. Dan opened him palm, the ring that sat there was dark and smooth and would have been perfect. Dan pushed a sigh out of his lungs and he slipped it to his right hand and threw it. He threw it hard and he didn’t stop himself when another round of tears slipped from his eyes –the first since the graveyard - and his legs gave up their strength.  He let himself sit on the wet sand, pulling his long legs to his chest. He knew the others would be down any moment, now that they’d seen everything. But for now he was alone, just him and the ocean and everything he’d have to learn how to atone for. He let himself cry and let the wind and the waves and the screaming gulls cry with him because he had to let Arin go now, too.

**Author's Note:**

> i asked for sad songs to use as inspo fodder on tumblr and space-mutt pointed me towards the mountain goats and this is what happened. i'm bad at titles so i just borrowed the song's that i pulled the most tone and concept from.


End file.
